By Jaysun Silver and Laura Thompson
Photography by Laura Thompson
Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism at WHRO
The Winchester Gazette, a news website covering this city of 28,000 people in the Shenandoah Valley, calls itself “a publication committed to reporting the truth.”
But city leaders, residents, newsmakers and a former reporter say the truth about the Gazette is a mystery.
The Gazette launched in August 2023, after Winchester had been losing local news resources for years. It immediately announced that it would follow a “no byline policy,” claiming that this would give its reporters protection from undue influence.
For three years, the Gazette has appeared to be a local news outlet. It files stories online about crime, government meetings and community events. But the website has never publicly identified its writers, staff, owners or source of funding.
City officials say they’ve never met a person identified as a Gazette reporter at a public event.
Yet top officials in the city — including the sheriff, the City Hall communications director and the former police chief — have granted telephone and email interviews to the Gazette. The Gazette has also spoken with lawyers, business leaders and political candidates throughout surrounding Frederick County. It has published op-eds from Winchester city council members and written editorials demanding more transparency from the local government and police.
According to the data company SimilarWeb, the Gazette now reaches about 11,000 unique visitors a month. Elected officials from both parties have been baffled by how so many colleagues and constituents trust this website shrouded in secrecy.
“I had a big concern about the Gazette, because I thought it was putting out misinformation to our citizens,” said John David Smith, a Democrat who served as Winchester’s mayor from 2016 to 2024. He said he worried that the Gazette, which covered serious issues with little transparency, could cause big harm and a rift in the community.
The city’s current vice mayor, John Fox, has criticized the Gazette on social media for its lack of transparency.
“They just come in, and now they have the voice, because there's not anybody there to really call them out or give any checks and balances,” said Fox, a Republican.
“It’s not fair to the community.”
An investigation by the Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism at WHRO has uncovered details about the Gazette’s operations and management. Public records requests and interviews with more than 30 people about the Gazette’s reporting and business practices have revealed measures making it difficult to identify the site’s ownership, employees, and its editorial decision-making.
VCIJ found:
*The Gazette was launched and owned by Commonwealth Media, Inc., a company connected in corporate filings to Carroll “Beau” Correll and his elderly relative, according to records filed with the Virginia State Corporation Commission. Correll, 44, is a personal injury attorney based in Winchester. He chairs both the Winchester Republican Committee and the city planning commission. He was also appointed to the Virginia Board of Workforce Development last year by then-Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican.
A Commonwealth Media filing for articles of dissolution with the Virginia SCC in December 2025 is signed by “C. Correll,” who is listed as “Officer.”
*Most Commonwealth Media corporate documents filed with Virginia’s State Corporation Commission listed the signature of a 90-year-old relative of Correll’s, who lives in Florida.
*The Gazette hired a freelance reporter in 2025 to focus on covering car accidents and collecting personal information from the people involved, according to a contract and nondisclosure agreement obtained by VCIJ. The reporter signed the non-disclosure agreement with the Gazette, which included penalties exceeding $100,000 if she revealed any internal information about the website. The reporter told VCIJ she never knew about the Gazette’s apparent connection to Correll and his business as a personal injury attorney. She said the editors also used artificial intelligence to generate stories that were often filled with errors.
*Gazette workers used phone numbers with area codes from Mexico and the Philippines, according to screenshots from an internal Gazette WhatsApp group obtained by VCIJ.
Correll declined repeated requests for an on-the-record interview with VCIJ. In an emailed statement in May, Correll wrote, “I do not own the blog. I have no individual or corporate interest in it, and I do not control its editorial direction.”
In a separate email, he wrote, “A signature on a filing reflects a procedural step related to winding down an entity, not ownership or control of a separate publication.”
The status of the Gazette’s ownership today isn’t clear.
In response to a detailed list of questions sent to the Gazette on September 14, an unsigned email from the website stated, “The Gazette will not discuss its ownership, its corporate history or its internal communications on a short clock.” The Gazette declined VCIJ’s requests for an in-person interview.
VCIJ also sent Correll a list of questions on September 14 to his personal email about his or his relative’s relationship to Commonwealth Media and the Gazette. “My prior on the record comments to you stand,“ Correll responded. “I am unable to answer for people I do not employ.”
The Gazette has communicated with VCIJ only through emails sent from a general address, newsdesk@thewinchestergazette.com. In a May email, the Gazette stated it is “not affiliated” with Commonwealth Media Inc. “To clarify, we are an independent local news outlet covering the area,” the statement said.
When VCIJ asked about the reported sale of the website, the Gazette responded in May: “The Gazette is an independent private endeavor, not a corporation, and we are not under any obligation to publicly discuss internal matters beyond what is legally required.”
The Gazette’s first emails to VCIJ were signed by “Sofia Alvarez.” Several community members told VCIJ that they were interviewed by someone who introduced herself as Alvarez through emails or brief phone calls, and some provided voice memos from her. None met her in person.
VCIJ’s calls to numbers associated with Alvarez were never answered, and voicemail messages were not returned.
A Facebook profile for someone named Sofia Alvarez says she’s based in Richmond. The profile does not list a profession. Public records searches found no one named Sofia Alvarez in Richmond, Winchester or elsewhere in Virginia who is a reporter for the Gazette. The Facebook profile photo is a stock image, available for purchase through some agencies under the title, “Portrait of a young pretty latin girl.”
Winchester is only about 75 miles outside of Washington, D.C. But its residents face the dilemma of many small towns across the U.S. — a dwindling force of local reporters, which gives rise to unverified information, often spread by opaque partisan or even foreign entities.
Virginia’s number of “news deserts” — communities with no newspaper or other credible news sources — more than doubled from 2023 to 2025, according to a study by Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.
The study found that 16 counties in Virginia, most of them rural, now have no legitimate news source. Sixty-four counties — more than two-thirds of the state — have only one news source. That includes Winchester’s Frederick County and its neighboring county, Shenandoah.
Winchester is only about 75 miles outside of Washington, D.C. But its residents face the dilemma of many small towns across the U.S. — a dwindling force of local reporters, which gives rise to unverified information, often spread by opaque partisan or even foreign entities.
Virginia’s number of “news deserts” — communities with no newspaper or other credible news sources — more than doubled from 2023 to 2025, according to a study by Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.
The study found that 16 counties in Virginia, most of them rural, now have no legitimate news source. Sixty-four counties — more than two-thirds of the state — have only one news source. That includes Winchester’s Frederick County and its neighboring county, Shenandoah.
Frederick County’s last major legacy news source is The Winchester Star, a 130-year-old daily newspaper with a print circulation of around 7,000, according to the Virginia Press Association. The local family owners sold the Star in 2018 to Ogden Newspapers, a West Virginia chain, which laid off staff and moved the newsroom to a smaller office. Star newsroom leaders declined to be interviewed for this story.
The Northern Virginia Daily, a newspaper in Shenandoah County, closed its Winchester bureau years ago. The family owners sold that paper to Ogden, too. Winchester also lost its ABC affiliate and the student newspaper of Shenandoah University.
This left Winchester with few options for reliable information, said Smith, the city’s former mayor. He believed that this void allowed the Gazette to emerge.
“If you were in a bigger city like Richmond, you wouldn't pay them any mind,” he said. “Just keep moving on and only pay attention to the real, newsworthy press. But we can't afford that.”
Websites presenting themselves as local news sources but do not follow traditional newsroom ethics and transparency have become known as “pink slime.”
Artificial intelligence now makes it easier than ever to launch a news website and fill it fast with content that looks like reported stories. The Gazette, if publishing AI-generated content as alleged by a former reporter, would face few of the costs or constraints that come with running a traditional newsroom. The Gazette’s content is free, while the Star has a paywall.
The Gazette did not respond to a question about whether it used AI to generate content.
The ease of creating an AI-powered news website in any community “makes it harder for the consumer to figure out who to trust,” said Eric Deggans, the Knight Professor of Journalism and Media Ethics at Washington and Lee University in Lexington.
“It makes it hard for people to sort through what kinds of media platforms are speaking to them, and why,” he said.
State business records show that the Gazette’s owner, Commonwealth Media, filed for incorporation in July 2023. The Gazette went live the next month, using the name of a newspaper in Winchester that folded in the 1820s.
Milly Mullins couldn’t believe her luck when she got an offer from the Gazette to become a contracted freelance reporter in May 2025.
Before then, Mullins had pulled long hours for little pay at newspapers close to her family’s farm in Martinsburg, West Virginia.
“I love journalism,” Mullins told VCIJ. But she was “no longer willing to do it for $10 an hour.” She found a Gazette job listing online and believed it was a local news startup right across the state border.
Mullins’ contract, received by VCIJ, stated that Commonwealth Media was the parent company of the Gazette. The contract said that the “most important part” of her job as “freelance field reporter” for the Gazette was to “obtain crash details” at accident scenes and “interview injured occupants or otherwise learn their details.”
The contract offered Mullins $2,800 a month, plus a monthly “Accident Log Bonus” of up to $10,000 for completed logs of car accidents. The bonuses depended on her collecting personal information for “the party not at fault” in car accidents, including their mailing addresses, according to the contract. The contract also stated that Mullins would “enter all of this information into a spreadsheet which is stored by the paper for later follow-up.”
Mullins said she had never heard of Beau Correll and didn’t know about the Gazette’s apparent connection to the personal injury attorney.
The Gazette had tried, and failed, to obtain accident data through other means before Mullins was hired.
VCIJ obtained, through a public records request, an email the Gazette sent to Frederick County in December 2024 requesting “records of crash reports created within the last year.” The county denied the Gazette’s request because the request did not include a requester’s name or address.
The Gazette did not respond to a specific question about the denial.
Mullis said she interacted with her Gazette editors only through phone calls and texts. She identified a Gazette editor named “Robert Williams” as the “main boss” who hired her. Williams instructed her to report on car accidents, she said.
Screenshots from the Gazette’s WhatsApp group obtained by VCIJ listed a phone number used by “Robert Williams.” When VCIJ entered the phone number in a LexisNexis public records search, it brought up the page for Correll.
Messages left with the number were not returned. VCIJ could not identify any man named Robert Williams who worked for the Gazette, and Correll did not answer questions from VCIJ about whether he was “Robert Williams.”
The Gazette did not respond to specific questions about Williams.
According to the screenshots and Mullins, the Gazette’s WhatsApp group also included Alvarez, who used a phone number with an area code from Tulum, Mexico, and an editor simply called “Alex,” who had a phone number with an area code from the Philippines.
In response to questions about Alvarez’s identity and professional background, the Gazette’s unsigned statement said, “A phone number is not a residence.”
The Gazette editors also expected Mullins to cover other news around Frederick County, she said. The editors fed her reporting notes into an AI program, she said, which often generated factual errors and fake quotes that got published.
“When I reread the article back, I was like, ‘They didn't say this, they didn't say this,’” she said. The editors would fix some of these errors after publication, without noting any corrections, Mullins added.
The editor calling himself “Robert Williams” told Mullins that if she couldn’t cover other stories during the day, “it was okay, as long as you got the accidents,” she recalled.
Mullins said she would drive an hour from Martinsburg to Winchester every day, listening to police radios for car accidents. When she arrived at accident scenes, first responders often ushered her away, bothered by a reporter trying to get contact information from victims. If too much time passed without accident reports, she recalled the editors instructed her to keep looking.
“I kept pissing them off, because I just wasn’t getting what they wanted,” Mullins said.
Her first payment did not arrive on time, she said. She lost patience with the Gazette’s lack of transparency and decided to leave after just one month. She chose to share the company’s non-disclosure agreement with VCIJ and discuss her experience at the Gazette, telling VCIJ: “Screw this non-transparency stuff.”
According to screenshots provided by Mullins to VCIJ, the Gazette gave her a single payment of $1,123.33, less than half the amount she said she was promised for the time she had worked. The Gazette sent a notification through a third-party payment platform that Mullins’ contract had been ended by “Robert Williams.”
Mullins worked for the Gazette, the site’s statement said, but editors found her work unsatisfactory.
Mullins now works at a Walmart in Martinsburg. She said she never put the Gazette on her resume, and hasn’t held another journalism job since leaving, but she wants to find a way back into the field.
“I miss it a lot. My whole identity was being a reporter,” she said. “Not doing that, it's like I don't even know who I am.”
Beau Correll is the only Winchester resident who signed a corporate document in state filings for Commonwealth Media. It’s not clear how involved he has been with the Gazette’s daily operations over the past three years, or how many people worked on the website.
Correll has repeatedly stated he does not have a personal interest in Commonwealth Media or the Gazette, and has denied being involved with the Gazette’s operations.
He founded the Correll Law Firm in Winchester in 2009. Today, on the firm’s social media pages, Correll puts his face on posts about six-figure personal injury settlements. The law firm recently released its own rap song, “From the Wreck to the Rise.”
Correll ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Blacksburg in 2002, when he was a 19-year-old Virginia Tech student. In the 2010s, he served his first stints as chairman of the Winchester Republican Committee and as a commissioner on the city planning commission.
He ran unsuccessfully for Winchester Commonwealth’s Attorney in 2015. After that race, members of the Winchester Republican Committee sued Correll, alleging he had improperly used his chairmanship to become the nominee, according to court records. A judge threw out the case and denied Correll’s request for reimbursement of attorney’s fees.
Correll’s political career has been covered regularly by The Winchester Star. One Star article from 2015 reported on a private letter from several City Council members that criticized Correll for a “consistent pattern of poor behavior and decision-making” while leading the local Republican Party.
The Gazette has also covered Correll's political and business activities. One article earlier this year wrote about his push for more Republicans to run for city council, and another noted his work leading the planning commission.
In a May email to VCIJ, Correll stated that the website “has published content that runs counter to my views, which is not consistent with the publication operating under my control.” He also said he has sent press releases to the Gazette and other local media outlets.
A website for Commonwealth Media, which is no longer online, presented the company as an ambitious statewide media enterprise, but it made no mention of Correll or the Gazette. The website said the company had a “dedication to transparency” and a “bold vision for the future” of local media, according to archived screenshots.
From July 2023 through September 2025, the only name listed on the company’s state business records is a man living in Florida. VCIJ is choosing not to name him.
In an email, Correll stated the man is an elderly relative who had recently suffered a stroke. The man’s name is signed as Commonwealth Media’s “incorporator” and “secretary.”
When reached by VCIJ by phone, the man said he was aware of the Gazette, but seemed uncertain whether he had signed documents for Commonwealth Media or provided money for the business.
Correll, in emails to VCIJ, said that his relative is a “recent stroke survivor” who “is not cognitively capable of handling questions” from reporters. “Until very recently, he was under legal protection due to his lack of capacity,” Correll wrote in May.
VCIJ asked Correll whether the relative had diminished capacity during the period spanning more than two years when he signed the company’s filings with the state government. Correll declined to answer, and he denied a request to show additional details about his relative’s health and legal protection.
In several media interviews in 2025, Correll identified himself as the founder of Fetch Agent, a real estate service. Fetch Agent said on its website in April that it is “proudly owned and operated by Commonwealth Media, Inc., a Virginia-based corporation.” VCIJ contacted Correll in May about this story. When VCIJ checked the website again in June, references to Commonwealth Media were removed. The original website is now taken down entirely.
The Gazette published a story about Fetch Agent in April 2025, announcing that it would be “transforming” the homebuying experience for Winchester and Frederick County. In December, Fetch Agent wrote on Facebook that it was for sale.
“We are looking for the right new owner to take over the assets and Intellectual Property before end of year for tax reasons,” the post said. It provided a contact email for Commonwealth Media.
The Gazette article and company website no longer existed when VCIJ checked in September. VCIJ did not receive responses to its messages to Fetch Agent representatives earlier this year.
Correll and The Gazette did not respond to questions about Fetch Agent.
City of Winchester emails and interviews with subjects of Gazette articles provide insight into how the website reported on the community.
In September 2023, as the Gazette started finding an audience, it received an email from Winchester’s then-city communications director, Christian “Kit” Redmer. He wrote that he wanted to “establish a collaborative, mutually beneficial relationship, to keep our community members informed on important issues.” In their response, the Gazette did not answer Redmer’s questions about who worked there.
“We believe the internal workings of our paper aren't crucial for external parties to understand,” the Gazette wrote to Redmer. “We'll gladly accept press releases, and if you have any comments, you'd like to share with us off the record, we're open to that. We simply believe it's not necessary to disclose our internal details at this time.”
Redmer replied, “Thanks, Gazette,” and said he would continue sharing information.
Emails obtained through a public records request show that Redmer kept regular contact with the website over the next two years. He repeatedly offered to set up phone interviews for the Gazette, including Sofia Alvarez.
In the emails, Redmer shared some concerns about the Gazette with City Hall colleagues. After a city employee forwarded the website’s request for an interview, Redmer wrote, “I don't think we need to necessarily respond to the Gazette unless you would like to do so. To be blunt, their reporting is rather amateurish, and they have an unfortunate tendency to distort our comments.”
In its statements to VCIJ, the Gazette defended the accuracy of its reporting.
Redmer also shared that the website promoted city government events. “At least they are helping us get the word out,” he wrote to a colleague in November 2023, sharing a Gazette article about a town hall on road safety.
Redmer declined to speak on the record for this story. In a statement, he said the city aims “to be highly responsive to press inquiries and to proactively provide press releases on issues of public interest, as appropriate.” The statement added, “we generally do not engage with organizations or reporters lacking verifiable credentials.”
Redmer left the City of Winchester in August. City spokesperson Sarah Frey said in a statement in September that the city has not independently verified the Gazette’s leadership. “The City requested information from the Winchester Gazette identifying its ownership or editorial leadership but did not receive a response,” Frey said, adding the city did not conduct an investigation.
Winchester Mayor Les Veach, a Republican, did not return requests for comment.
Smith, the former Winchester mayor, said he believed the Gazette was part of an effort “to dumb down city politics and city departments.” The site was “always slanted towards the Republicans. It wasn’t very favorable of Democrats,” he said.
“They can put out anything that they want, whether it's valid or not,” Smith said.
The Gazette did not respond directly to Smith’s comment. “Independent journalism is alive and well in the Shenandoah Valley because of The Gazette,” the statement said.
The Gazette endorsed Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential race, in an article attributed to the “Winchester Gazette Editorial Board.” On election night, the Gazette proclaimed itself “the first newspaper in the country” to call the race for Trump.
In 2025, the Gazette ran a social media ad urging readers to abandon the Star.
VCIJ spoke with two people quoted in Gazette stories who said the website never interviewed them, and that their published quotes appear to be lifted from other sources.
“They did not speak with me,” said Dwayne Griles, a commissioner in Halifax County, who was the only person quoted in a Gazette story from 2023 about a payroll error for USPS employees.
“I did not have an interview with them,” he said.
Lorrie Ruffner, a resident of Martinsburg, West Virginia, told VCIJ that she was never talked to for a Gazette story in August 2024, which said she had given “an exclusive interview” about the search for a runaway teenager, for whom she was the legal guardian. (Police told VCIJ that the boy returned in October 2024, and he turned 18 earlier this year.)
“I never spoke to anyone from The Winchester Gazette,” Ruffner said. “I don't even know where they're located, or anything.” After reading the article, she said, “I don't know if they took my words off of my Facebook post — because that's the only place I posted it.”
The Gazette stated both Griles and Ruffner “were interviewed; the Gazette stands by both stories.”
Commonwealth Media, Inc. filed articles of dissolution on the last day of 2025. The filing is the only document where Correll is identified as being affiliated with the company.
“A signature on a filing reflects a procedural step related to winding down an entity, not ownership or control of a separate publication," Correll wrote to VCIJ.
Weeks after the papers were filed, in February 2026, The Winchester Gazette announced that it was “in the process of finalizing a sale.”
“Readers can look forward to a robust expansion of our work, including updated breaking news coverage, a significantly expanded social media reach, and new features dedicated to the life of our community,” the Gazette wrote.
VCIJ found no documentation of a sale, and the Gazette did not answer questions about it.
“Like many independent orgs, we have explored/participated in conversations related to the future at various points, including earlier this year,” the Gazette wrote in its email to VCIJ in May. “We do not have additional details to share publicly at this time.”
Sale or no sale, the Gazette is publishing multiple stories a day. It has published more than 6,000 items since 2023, according to their statement.
In March, the Gazette published an opinion piece complaining about how it had been routinely excluded from certain press lists, while local officials still gave information to “the area’s long-established local newspaper.” The Gazette framed its role in the community as “essential to democracy.”
“One thing is certain,” the Gazette wrote in the unsigned editorial. “We are not going anywhere, and this practice of withholding public information cannot last forever.”
Reach Jaysun Silver at itsjaysunsilver@gmail.com and Laura Thompson at laura@laurathompsonphoto.com